MUSINGS: On Hardware Audiophilia and Wine Tasting.

Across the years of audiophile discussions, we sometimes will see parallels drawn between the world of the oenophile (wine connoisseur) and hardware audiophile. While both pursuits involve a strong subjective component since the ultimate intent is enjoyment, there are also clearly differences when we take the time to compare them. I actually don't think many of the heated debates among audiophiles have meaningful analogues within the wine-tasting world.

Recently, in this thread on Steve Hoffman Forum about "snake oil", J-Flo made a nice comment on this; let's have a look at his post and I'll add my observations and thoughts with some opportunity to expand upon the ideas.

First, here's the comment in full:

J-Flo, Saturday April 27, 2024 at 2:26 PM:

I see many parallels between audiophile accessorizing and the world of fine wine (a prior obsession of mine that was hundreds of times more expensive than being an audiophile). In that arena many of the world’s top producers employ a wide range of arcane and some seemingly voodoo-like practices, and the analytically observable characteristics provide only categorical baselines (including basic flavor profile, how “hot” or alcoholic the wine is, whether it will overwhelm or complement food, and whether the wine is drinkable and will keep). But other than broad flavor and aroma profiles, wine lovers for the most part accept that science doesn’t have all the answers for an aesthetic endeavor. Wine lovers then spend time tasting different producers, vineyards, vintages and figuring out what qualities appeal most to the individual taster, finding words to describe those things, and then seeking out those characteristics in other wines. But they are mostly focused on the wine, and spend limited mental bandwidth and budget on peripherals such as the perfect glassware, decanting, storage, etc.

(To take an example of the worlds’ finest red burgundy / pinot noir producers, some of them practice organic farming, some are fully biodynamic and use methods supposedly learned from druids, many of them use egg whites to “fine” the larger particles out of the wine, others use “gentle” filtering, at least one uses fully gravity-based techniques (no pumping), most of them harvest and sort the grapes by hand, a surprising number of them use oak barrels harvested from old trees in a particular forest in France. Most wine lovers might note these details with interest but just enjoy the wine.)

Interestingly, audiophiles are much more focused on seemingly peripheral subjects like cabling, isolation, power conditioning, and the like. There’s a lot more attention to “scientific analysis” in this realm, predicated (in my opinion) on the erroneous view that we are able to scientifically measure and explain everything we sense aesthetically. I don’t believe we can at present, and even if we could (or someday can with better science and modeling of how our brains work), there is still no good reason why something measurable or the lack thereof should override subjective preferences.

This forum contains many examples of people praising the dramatic way in which a different isolation technique opened up a cornucopia of wonder in the listener’s $25,000 system (which helped to persuade me that I didn’t need such a system). I believe almost anything can make an audible difference and am not questioning others’ hearing, rather I believe that each listener’s aesthetic sense should control their experience. For myself, I try to focus more on things that I believe make a lot more difference in what I hear — recording quality/mastering, speakers, room.

While I would not consider myself an oenophile, I do enjoy a bottle here and there with friends and family. I guess it's like in audio discussions when a guy comes out and says "I'm not really an audiophile, but love music!". BTW, here in British Columbia, we have some nice vineyards especially in the Okanagan so check out some local offerings.

The first thing I feel that needs to be discussed is to be clear about what is being enjoyed. When we taste wine for pleasure, we are experiencing different flavors from different vineyards. Different techniques with all the variables that add to the taste like soil conditions, weather, grape varieties, type of barrel used, duration of fermentation, cultivation conditions chosen by the vintner, aging, etc. all will change the final product. That is, the "thing" (wine) that's being experienced is objectively different coming out from the bottle depending on producer, vintage, storage condition, and age before being opened and tasted. I'm sure we can measure characteristics of each wine and note differences in pH, fluid density, visible clarity, sugar / tannin / alcohol content. If we put each wine through spectroscopic and chromatographic analyses, there would be unique "fingerprints" found. As one would expect, yes there are papers written about testing "wine quality" utilizing objective methods; here's one using spectroscopy for wine authentication.

Correlating these ideas to the world of the audiophile, I think it's reasonable to compare the wine itself to "music". That is, the music recording. Since wines all come from fermented grapes, each variant will still taste like "wine" rather than beer or whiskey. So too, perhaps classic jazz albums share similar characteristics. Using this analogy, a beer might be like the pop genre, vodka akin to hard rock, maybe classic rock could be a nice aged Scotch. 🙂

A wine lover preferring a well-regarded brand of Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon over a fine Argentinian Malbec would be like a music lover saying they subjectively prefer Kind Of Blue over Sketches of Spain. I can't imagine oenophiles getting too agitated over such personal preferences, nor would audiophiles have any reason to get angry over which of these Miles Davis albums sound the "best" for him/herself.

Subjective enjoyment of the artist's work (the music itself) is not what objective-leaning audiophiles care to argue about; we understand that this would be pointless. Nobody gets upset if someone enjoys red vs. white or French vs. American wine, just like we can't insist anyone needs to prefer Miles Davis over Dave Brubeck.

Notice how different this is compared to the debates on audiophile forums about the "best" fancy cables, or tweaks where comments can get pretty snarky. Debates over most reasonable components like (pre)amplifiers, speakers, DACs, streamers, turntables, phono cartridges, etc. typically are not as heated unless we start getting into the territory of ridiculous pricing; allegations of "audio jewelry" which in my mind is a form of snake oil.

Unlike the preference in taste between different wines, in the hardware audiophile world, we're commonly debating claims that the same music file or LP sounds significantly different because of the hardware changes we've introducing as end users. Do such arguments happen in the wine tasting world?

Do wine connoisseurs insist that their expensive Venetian Murano glassware (like this very nice US$560 one) make the same wine from the same original bottle taste very different compared to the inexpensive glassware from IKEA (like the $5 DYRGRIP)? The most I've see is the idea that wineglass shapes such as a larger mouth can change oxygenation and the larger bowl might help "release aroma" from the volatile alcohol (discussions like this).

Wine enthusiasts can do things like use a decanter to aerate the wine to change flavors, I suppose (this article in Scientific American might help us understand the science of wine decanting). Perhaps the use of a good wine cooler for storage is important, but I'm not sure if wine aficionados debate too vigorously about a "high-end" cooler making a huge difference in taste assuming the temperatures are measurably maintained equivalently over time when comparing to a much less expensive brand.

As J-Flo noted, wine production is complex:

(To take an example of the worlds’ finest red burgundy / pinot noir producers, some of them practice organic farming, some are fully biodynamic and use methods supposedly learned from druids, many of them use egg whites to “fine” the larger particles out of the wine, others use “gentle” filtering, at least one uses fully gravity-based techniques (no pumping), most of them harvest and sort the grapes by hand, a surprising number of them use oak barrels harvested from old trees in a particular forest in France. Most wine lovers might note these details with interest but just enjoy the wine.)

Perhaps processes like filtering do change the wine's taste greatly, maybe they don't, but whatever process used will in some way change the physical product itself to various degrees. This is analogous to the world of music recording, mixing, and mastering. Whatever microphone was chosen will leave an impression, whatever effects processor like EQ or DAW plugin was applied by the artist and audio engineer will change the audible "taste" of the final music. However, none of this has to do with the audiophile's playback system just like the oenophile has no ability to adjust these variables other than choose the winery and vintage they prefer to buy from.

Since there's nothing we can do to change the recorded music, just like the quality of the wine we buy, the best we can achieve is to fully experience the thing itself (the sound, the taste) as completely and unadulterated as possible. This is why I've always advocated for "high-fidelity" / "transparency", as the ideal when it comes to audiophile-level music playback. Using low-fidelity, low-resolution gear is akin to the wine lover trying to enjoy his $200 bottle of Caymus Special Selection Cabernet Sauvignon poured into a dirty unwashed glass that someone just used for their $3.49 Charles Shaw Merlot from Trader Joe's. 🫢

[By all means, enjoy the "Two-Buck Chuck"! It's probably fine. 😁]

When J-Flo says:

Interestingly, audiophiles are much more focused on seemingly peripheral subjects like cabling, isolation, power conditioning, and the like. There’s a lot more attention to “scientific analysis” in this realm, predicated (in my opinion) on the erroneous view that we are able to scientifically measure and explain everything we sense aesthetically. I don’t believe we can at present, and even if we could (or someday can with better science and modeling of how our brains work), there is still no good reason why something measurable or the lack thereof should override subjective preferences.

This is an important point. When it comes to heated audiophile hardware debates, we're often referring to the peripheral things like cables and tweaks like power conditioners, often not even important components like speakers, amps, or our rooms. These are not debates over the music/recording itself like comparing artistic merit, or even which pressing of an LP, which remaster, which mix of the album; all of these could actually have a fundamental impact on the sound.

Notice that I underlined a part of the middle sentence in J-Flo's comment above. While I agree that we don't have a model of the brain to be able to aesthetically explain preferences at this point in history, the measurement tools we have can already easily detect differences to tell us whether the sonic reproduction has changed and the magnitude of this change. Audio content encoded in the digital data and physical grooves, converted to electrical signals and then transduced to physical compressions and rarefactions to create sound waves can be measured to levels beyond human perceptual ability down to μV, nano/pico/femtoseconds, fractions of dB and Hz, etc. As such, I believe we can measure "everything we sense" even if we cannot judge the aesthetic significance for each person.

If "snake oil" products and tweaks are able to affect sound audibly, then there should be no difficulty quantifying those changes. Not only do we not have objective evidence for audio snake oil products, but we have not seen controlled, blinded, listening tests for them either (very important).

Images from Social Vignerons and Audio Bacon's survey of RCA cables.

When certain audiophiles and reviewers seriously insists that their US$1,000 RCA cable is going to make a significant audible difference, with the same recording based solely on testimony, this is akin to the very serious wine lover at the top of this post agonizingly obsessing over which of his various luxury wine glasses make the same bottle taste best because he apparently believes there are big differences! This kind of emotional investment in beliefs without evidence obviously could become psychologically pathological.

This forum contains many examples of people praising the dramatic way in which a different isolation technique opened up a cornucopia of wonder in the listener’s $25,000 system (which helped to persuade me that I didn’t need such a system). I believe almost anything can make an audible difference and am not questioning others’ hearing, rather I believe that each listener’s aesthetic sense should control their experience. For myself, I try to focus more on things that I believe make a lot more difference in what I hear — recording quality/mastering, speakers, room.

Yes, in general I can agree, especially the importance of that last sentence about the most important things - recording quality, speakers, and room.

Most of the time, sure, let's not get too emotional and fight about what we like. However, if we're discussing audio hardware on forums attempting to understand each other, how the technologies work, presumably each of us trying to build great-sounding high-fidelity sound systems, then we also need to be able to stand up to highly questionable claims. Being able to deduce the valuable from worthless products helps us navigate through a complex marketplace filled with magnified advertising claims.

I don't see a problem questioning others' hearing if there's likelihood of nonsense being claimed - like recent discussions around Herb Reichert and expensive cables. I also don't believe "anything can make an audible difference" if there's no reason to believe that the signal is significantly altered.

If the audiophile hobby is totally subjective and everything is possible including going against scientific principles, then there's not much point discussing anything and there's nothing really to learn from each other. We might as well just hang out with the like-minded fanboys. Perhaps buy every expensive cable and tweak out there and "listen for yourself". There would be no truth except "my truth". I'm sure every questionable manufacturer like Synergistic Research would love that we spend money in turn trying their colored fuses for example! I hope it's obvious that all they're trying to do is expedite the transfer of funds from the audiophools' bank accounts into theirs.

Ultimately, let's make sure that we seek the facts in this hobby while clearly acknowledge the subjective beauty of music and that there are many ways to reproduce recordings with the high fidelity hardware options available today within reasonable price points.

Facts are to the mind what food is to the body. On the due digestion of the former depend the strength and wisdom of the one, just as vigor and health depend on the other. The wisest in council, the ablest in debate, and the most agreeable companion in the commerce of human life, is that man who has assimilated to his understanding the greatest number of facts.     ----- Edmund Burke (1729-1797)

TL;DR:

Audio recordings are the wine we consume as audiophiles; pick the variety (genre), vintage (album), and producer (artist) that gives you the most pleasure.

Audio hardware is like the wine lover's decanter and glassware that we use to consume the music. If you want to change the "taste" of your music, by all means utilize "colored"-sounding hardware or devices like EQ.

I don't think wine lovers purposely seek out dirty glassware that alters the taste. So too, if one is interested in high-fidelity, uncolored sound, then follow best-practice, evidence-based, guidelines to find low-distortion, low-noise equipment with flat frequency response and create for yourself a high-quality sound room.

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For those who have not seen it yet, check out Benchmark's Audiophile Snake Oil article posted recently in early April. It's good that as audiophiles we have respectable companies and engineers willing to call it like it is.

As per the article, "Don't be That Guy" excited by all the rampant, uneducated beliefs out there about silly products that have no basis in reality - especially some of the most crazy stuff like fuses, receptacles, 'conditioners', directional cables, etc...

[The only quibble I have with the article is the part about: "Start by replacing components that only support unbalanced (RCA) analog interconnects. Replace any component that cannot deliver at least a 115 dB SNR."

For the most part, RCA is fine although we can get better noise-rejection and freedom from hum with balanced cables. And while 115dB SNR is obviously very good and not particularly difficult to achieve with some devices like DACs, I suspect a sound system would be excellent already with SNR 100dB across one's electronic system! For reference, the best that LPs can achieve would be maybe 65-70dB and reel-to-reel tape up to 75dB without Dolby SR processing (see this, with some specs from the NAGRA IV-S reel-to-reel machine at 15ips). Even with noise reduction, analog gear would not achieve 16-bit/CD-quality SNR which is "only" around 96dB.

In real-world listening, your noise floor will dictate how much dynamic range is needed. In a concert hall for example, it's unlikely we would ever need more than 80dB. A few weeks ago, I measured the noise floor at The Orpheum Theater during a Vancouver Symphony Orchestra performance. At best, when the audience was quiet, the noise floor was around 40dB SPL seated at Orchestra level, about row 5, just left of center. A dynamic range of 80dB implies peaks up to 120dB; loud enough to threaten hearing damage. 

While it's nice having modern hardware with high SNR, let's make sure we focus on our listening room's noise level! To me, the room (and how we optimize the sound) is clearly the most important part of the audio system. Especially for us urban dwellers in an age of affordability and housing issues, this could be a major challenge. When you have a quiet sound room, things like computer coil whine, cooling fans, and transformer hum can be issues easily unnoticed by those who listen in noisier environments. For example this expensive amplifier had an annoying transformer hum I would not have been satisfied with, yet I had not seen reviewers mention such an obvious issue.

I know many audiophiles drool over the latest and greatest electronics 🤤, but the gear is easier to buy and only meaningful if we have a good room to match. The rise of high quality "head-fi" is an alternative, but obviously a much different musical presentation and experience.]

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Happy May 2024, everyone. Hope you're all enjoying the music & wine. Cheers!

Greetings from New York City. 🗽 I might wander into the audiophile establishments in Manhattan if I get the time and inspiration. Maybe will post some pictures if I do...

Don't forget to get me your results in the 2024 "High-End" DAC Blind Listening Survey. You have until May 15th to be counted; about 10 days left from the publication of this post. The files are already in a directory with cover image so you can just import it into your music directory like Roon to listen. Of course, feel free to let fellow audiophiles know of the test.

While no blind testing methodology is perfect, I believe this is the easiest, and highest-resolution way to test over the Internet. For those with the courage to listen and be counted, I think you'll appreciate the experience all the more once I unblind the 3 devices; who knows, you might be very surprised by the devices chosen and your blinded listening impressions.

Thanks for all those who have submitted their listening impressions already!